Colombia: Exhumation of death squad victims begins
Colombia: Exhumation of death squad victims begins
Tuesday 28th Jul 2015
by Our Foreign Desk
COLOMBIAN forensic experts began excavating the suspected mass grave yesterday of as many as 300 victims of right-wing death squads.
The Escombra landfill site outside Medellin, the country’s second-largest city, could be the biggest mass grave in the the history of the US-backed dirty war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Three sections of the site have been cordoned off while investigators search for victims’ remains. A camp is also being built for the relatives of the disappeared.
The search is complicated by the fact that construction debris has been continuously dumped on the site for more than a decade despite pleas by victims’ families for it to be closed and excavated.
“For years we denounced forced disappearances on a large scale and nothing was done,” said Inter-American Court of Human Rights lawyer Adriana Arboleda, whose organisation is helping victims’ families sue the government.
. . .
Many of the paramilitary crimes were carried out in alliance with US-trained security forces.
More:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-ba30-Colombia-Exhumation-of-death-squad-victims-begins#.VbiMSs9RGbw
